A Philosophical Path from Königsberg to Kyoto: The Science of the Infinite and the Philosophy of Nothingness

Sophia 60 (4):851-868 (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

‘Mathematics is the science of the infinite, its goal the symbolic comprehension of the infinite with human, that is finite, means.’ Along this line, in The Open World, Hermann Weyl contrasted the desire to make the infinite accessible through finite processes, which underlies any theoretical investigation of reality, with the intuitive feeling for the infinite ‘peculiar to the Orient,’ which remains ‘indifferent to the concrete manifold of reality.’ But a critical analysis may acknowledge a valuable dialectical opposition. Struggling to spell out the infinity of real numbers mathematicians come to see the active role of emptiness. Pondering over the essence of self-awareness, the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō comes to see the ‘place’ where it abides as absolute nothingness. Thus, the two ways of seeing coalesce into a perspective in which infinity and nothingness mirror each other.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 102,323

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-07-23

Downloads
71 (#301,696)

6 months
6 (#837,601)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Rossella Lupacchini
University of Bologna

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The philosophy of symbolic forms.Ernst Cassirer, Ralph Manheim & Charles W. Hendel - 1957 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 12 (4):399-399.
Was Sind und was Sollen Die Zahlen?Richard Dedekind - 1888 - Cambridge University Press.
The individual and the cosmos in Renaissance philosophy.Ernst Cassirer - 1963 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Mario Domandi.

View all 21 references / Add more references